I'm giving up acting. . . . I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write.

If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along.

Creativity is very selfish. Scandalously so, in fact.

We compound our suffering by victimizing each other.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.

Theater will never, and never has, gotten audiences like film. But theater goes to work on society in a different and more subversive way.

Every boy needs a role model that he can be proud of and talk about to the other kids in the playground.